


Liminal Space

by athletiger



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreamsharing, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-01-01 03:10:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18327422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athletiger/pseuds/athletiger
Summary: The sketch that Steve had left behind last time was still in his hand, staring back at him innocently. Tony exhaled. “What is this?” Tony asked dully. “What game are you playing at?”Steve shook his head. “I’m not playing any games,” Steve replied, words hesitant.“Please,” Tony whispered. He turned the paper around, nearly ripping it in his haste, looking at the picture again. “Don’t lie to me. This is worse than when you stuck a shield in my chest.”Tony looked up from the image, staring at the figure in front of him. Suddenly, he couldn’t bear seeing Steve, so he turned around, walked a few steps away from the image of the man. “This got to be a new form of nightmares,” Tony mumbled, “This is my head showing me what I can’t have, ever.”“I love you,” Steve burst out. Tony stilled, heart pounding hard. Steve sounded breathless.No.-After the Snap, the remaining Avengers are left to pick up the pieces. Steve and his team are on Earth, trying to hold themselves together in the wake of the apocalyptic event; Tony and Nebula are fighting to return to Earth. A million light years apart, Steve and Tony dream to see each other one last time...May love guide them home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamkist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamkist/gifts).



> Riding on the wave of the last Avengers Endgame trailer, I finally present to you the first part of my MTH 2018 fic for my lovely ifall who bid me last October. Absolutely special thanks to my lovely cheerreader [coaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaster/pseuds/coaster), who let me cry on their shoulder during this entire process while I whined and moped about writing plot, and then my beta and boyfriend kaisertum_osterreich who edited this fic. Enjoy!

PROLOGUE

In the aftermath of unimaginable tragedy, the universe was quiet, mourning the loss of her people. In the wake of silence, dust settled to the ground, revealing carnal destruction: tall buildings leveled, human-less cars piled up in the middle of street corners, and people just standing there in the middle of the wrecked street, dazed, confused, horrified. It was almost unfathomable to imagine that just one snap could instantaneously change a whole world.

Nowhere was safe from this loss. As the tall grass bowed gently under the blowing wind in Wakanda, soldiers stood stock still, lost and empty. They had fought a great battle expecting to win, expecting to beat Thanos.

(“Earth is closed!” and would be protected by her people as long as they lived, the Avengers promised.)

They lost – they couldn’t protect what they sworn to protect. In an instant, millions of people died because of a force greater than what the Avengers could handle; they’d lost friends and teammates because they couldn’t keep their promise. The ashes lifted into the blowing breeze, leaving only dead silence in its wake. The grief hadn’t settled in yet, but in time, it would, and Earth would grieve for all the people she lost.

United they had stood.

(When it came down to protecting Earth the first time around, when Loki opened the portal between Earth and the rest of the Universe, the team banded together in unity to fight for a common cause. The team may have been outnumbered, outgunned, out of their depth fighting something they had never encountered before, but with desperation came strength, and they won. It proved that a group of remarkable people with very different lives could work together when there was a battle that normal people could never fight. From different backgrounds, strangers became a team, and that team became family.)

But divided, they fell. Perhaps if they were banded together like before, they would have succeeded in pushing back Thanos, but they would never know for sure. As such, the universe was numb from the utter devastation, facing the consequences of a judge, jury, and executioner.

Stunned.

    (The loss was too great to bear, so they kneeled, gripping the ground in hopes that they could catch even an echo of who had disappeared.)

Grieving.

 

The cries of despair broke the silence when their brains had finally processed the loss.

 

 

And in the wake of the setting sun, the tears pattered to the ground, and the Avengers held their collective breaths in defeat,

 

 

separated.

 

 

-

Tony stumbled after Nebula, holding an ache of emptiness in his chest and the crumbling pieces of his helmet in his hand. He was exhausted from the events of the day, the torrent of emotions washing over him. His world was tinged in grey, and he was in agony both physically and mentally.

The spaceship in front of them was standing there in all its glory, perfect and untouched by the fight. Tony hated it, and it felt silly to have a grudge against an inanimate object. However, it just felt like a sin to see the ship marked _The Benatar_ be so…pure when all they had seen today was death and destruction. Even Tony’s suit wasn’t spared by the events, scratched up and torn apart under Thanos’s hand. However, _The Benatar_ was also their only ticket to ride away from here, so Tony stamped down his emotions and trawled after Nebula, walking up the ramp into the ship. Already she had almost disappeared, her feet taking her up into another level of the ship. Tony followed her into the cockpit, and he took a seat in the back row. Normally, he would fight for the pilot’s seat, but now he simply watched her manipulate the controls, starting the ship and taking them away from Titan.

“Where to?” Nebula asked, as the ship left the ground. They focused their gazes towards the open sky, leaving desolation behind.

In this factor of unknown, where the past was gone and the future was uncertain, Tony felt lost, but if there was one thing he wanted, it was to go “Home,” Tony said. “I want to go back to Earth.”

“Very well.”

The adrenaline high dissipated into thin air as they continued to climb higher into space and Tony’s eyes closed involuntarily, unwillingly, his body succumbing to his tiredness.

-

His eyes snapped open. The entire room was red, casting an eerie hue that coated even the air he breathed. He remained facing forward, breathing only shallowly because it seemed difficult to even draw a deeper breath. His eyes fixed upon the wall in front of him. This place was unfamiliar, but Tony couldn’t bring it within himself to be frightened – he was too exhausted to even be scared. Somehow, however, he also knew that there was nothing behind him…there was no possibility for escape in this God-forsaken area.

He felt all alone, and perhaps this was punishment for his sins, to be in this prison. Too weak to defeat his enemies, letting Peter die in his arms because he wasn’t strong enough to ask for help. This Red Room wasn’t heaven, but it didn’t feel like hell either. It felt like…someone was behind him. Tony tensed at the unknown presence, but he dared not look back. Tony’s heartbeat pounded to the cadence of the slow march that grew ever louder until it stopped a few inches behind him. He waited, body still and frozen.

“Tony.” The familiar voice washed over him even though the voice sounded as if he was far away, and Tony closed his eyes, letting _his_ voice reverberate through his body. His chest swelled and ached, and he swallowed thickly, tears prickling in his eyes. God, he missed him. Nearly every spare thought went to him, and in every dream, _he_ visited in some way, shape, or form.

But usually when _he_ visited, they were nightmares. If he turned around _he_ would be there – the dream him, that is. It’s why he didn’t often sleep. He didn’t know if he wanted to face yet another fight that he was sure he would lose. Heaven knows that he had already lost enough. Still, whether it was missing his friend or lacking self-preservation instincts, Tony was always drawn to look at _him_ again and again, even though _he_ hurt him every single time.

“Steve,” Tony breathed, still facing forward. He exhaled heavily. With his eyes still shut, he turned around. “Cap.”

Tony opened his eyes, expecting to see an angry version of Steve Rogers, the one that left him back in the cold bunker of Siberia. It was the typical version of him these days when he dreamed of him. Sometimes the dreams took on the form of Steve raising his shield high above his prone body, eyes glaring at him in utter disgust as the edge of the disc gradually gained momentum in its downward trajectory before finding its home deep within his chest. It normally stayed there, held up in the dent of armor and between broken ribs while Tony gasped his last breaths around the foreign object in his body, looking up at Cap’s cold eyes.

Sometimes, he dreamt about Steve walking away from him, holding an unconscious Bucky by his side. Every step away from Tony felt final, and whatever bonds of fate they had between the two tugged painfully at his heart with every inch further away, and it felt as if it was going to snap in half.

In some dreams, Tony’s skull was crushed against the cold concrete wall, and Tony could only watch as Steve chose Bucky, cradling his friend’s broken body while Tony slid down ungracefully, smearing a trail of blood in its wake as he slumped downwards and hemorrhaged to death. As his eyes glazed over, the shield from Steve’s hand carelessly, rolling at its side before it stilled besides the broken armor.

And sometimes, Tony fell in the same way Rhodey fell, the armor’s power cut mid-flight as the shield sliced cleanly through all the power sources in the armor. Tony fell like a fallen angel, arms stretched out as gravity took its hold and hurtled him uncontrollably to the ground.

Suffice to say, in those two years, Tony barely slept as his nightmares took hold and guilt wracked his body. But never had Tony dreamed about a _saddened_ Steve Rogers like the one who was facing him now. It was shocking, to say the least, because those sky-blue eyes were never shiny with unshed tears, nor were there ever any wrinkles on his perfect forehead. Dream-Steve was never so unsure of himself, haunching his shoulders forward, or gave Tony a grief-stricken look. It caught Tony utterly off-guard; he knew how to ride through a dream of a murderous Steve. He didn’t know how to deal with this miserable man in front of him.

“Tony,” Steve repeated, his voice finally becoming crystal clear. Tony was silent, staring, memorizing at this…stranger in front of him. The silence stretched between them, and long moments pass as they stood frozen looking at each other before the Steve-lookalike made a noise from deep within his chest and took a small step forward. Immediately Tony jerked back, a full body flinch as he sought to keep distance from this Steve, and Steve watched as Tony stepped back like a startled colt.

 _Steve_ did that to Tony, made him afraid of _him_. It hurt, to say the least, watching as Tony disappeared into thin air, knowing that Tony had carried the weight of Steve’s transgressions for the last two years. And although it was Tony’s fault for attacking Bucky in a fit of passionate and blind anger, Steve was as much at fault for provoking Tony and escalating it, fighting Tony the way he did bullies.

And this time, he wasn’t the small, skinny boy, falling down after every punch but still getting back up again. No, this time he was the big guy, one of the strongest men and enhanced by science, and he used his strength to _hurt_. It was a quick inhale, merging on a sob, and…

Steve snapped awake quietly, a habit he never shook off from working undercover ops. However, as he laid on his side in a bed that was still unfamiliar, his heart ached. Too many people were just gone in a snap: Bucky, Sam, T’Challa, Wanda. More. In this post-apocalyptic world, sleep was sparse; too much work had to be done. Governments had collapsed, city infrastructure had fallen to the wayside, and missing bodies were still rising steadily. Steve…didn’t want to get out of bed and face the world.

He had to. There was no choice. Here he was, a man out of his time, forever outliving others. Back then, Steve thought it was a blessing, and he’d do good with the gift he was given. Now, he cursed upon its very existence because he never stopped fighting battles.

He wanted to go _home_.

-

They gathered at the Wakandan war council meeting room. At any other time, Steve would have loved to study the grand architecture of the room, detailed with vibranium and gold, but now, he had no energy to study the art carefully. Steve sat at the head of the conference table; the Avengers, Rocket, and Okoye sat along the other sides. Spread evenly on the oak surface were a row of Kimoyo beads. Each bead lit up to play holograms above of the various news channels played above their heads, but only half were on air and broadcasting the ruins on the ground.

Steve was so, so worn. He didn’t want to do this. Every face was looking at him, waiting for him to begin, but he felt just as lost them. _Where’s the man who stood up to bullies?_ Steve thought dully. “Wha – “ Steve started, stopping when his voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “What’s the status?”

“Thanos did what he said he would do: he wiped out half of all living creatures,” Natasha exhaled. She was sallow and looked just as defeated as Steve felt, which was a testament to the loss of control they all had, if emotions were showing on their faces.

“Bruce, do we know the exact number of bodies?”

“There’s no way to tell,” Bruce replied. “I’m compiling the list, but it is by far not comprehensive. However, we’ve catalogued most of the key figures. King T’Challa and Princess Shuri are gone, as you know. China’s president is gone. Canada’s president is still alive, as well as the prime minister of the U.K.”

“How about the U.S.?”

“The President and the Vice President are both gone. The Secretary of State had taken over.”

Steve stared at the holograms as if they would hold the answers to his problems. It was worse than he thought. Countries would topple entirely with the lack of stable infrastructure, if they hadn’t already.

“Thor, do you have to return to Asgard?” He desperately hoped that Thor did not have to go.

And he didn’t, even though Steve was sad when Thor replied solemnly, “Asgard is no more. My people are gone as well for Thanos has murdered them, so I will stay on Earth.”

What the world needed now were the Avengers to bring them out of this great loss, but the truth of the matter is, Steve…Steve couldn’t do it. He wasn’t a politician; he was a soldier. And he had no choice even though he felt so lost.

“What do we do now?” All of them, including the Wakandans, looked to him to take the next steps. And Steve didn’t have answer for them. He bit his lip and looked down, unable to face them. There wasn’t a man with a plan this time around. Steve was just a man out of his time, outliving most people.

…He didn’t really want to do this anymore.

There was a hand on his arm, and Steve looked up to see Thor looking back at him with knowing eyes. Right, Thor was a leader too, a leader of his people who he had just lost. And now Steve was the leader of Earth whether he liked it or not.

So he said hoarsely, not even a modicum of confidence in his words, “We rebuild. We are responsible for protecting Earth, so we do what we were tasked to do. We must go back out there and help those who need help.”

Okoye spoke then. “Wakanda cannot spare resources right now. We must first grieve for our dead, and then we must rebuild ourselves.”

“Understood. Please, tell your people that we are grateful that you stood with us, and we are sorry that we could not prevent this tragedy from happening.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Wakanda appreciates your words.”

It was time. The bittersweet feeling rolled in his stomach, and he nodded helplessly, biting his lips while his eyes burned. There was a list of things he wanted, but he would settle for just one for now. He gave his teammates a shaky, closed-lipped remnant of a smile. “Let’s go home.”

-

Being on ground zero looked even worse than what the holograms had shown. Donned with their uniform, the Avengers stepped off the plank of the Quinjet at the heart of Times Square, seeing the utter emptiness of the people walking the war-torn streets. While New York had faced its fair share of war, its people had always endured, stood up, and rebuilt afterwards. This time, however, it seemed as thought Thanos’ victory had robbed them of all hope and the will to continue living.

Steve imagined that they were accusing them of being unable to stop this death and destruction.

He just wished Tony was here, sweeping to save the day, his flattering words easing people’s apprehension. Tony always did it so much better than him. But, as it was, toiling on the ground, removing debris from the streets, made the world a little bit more grey without the easy banter Tony normally made to ease the chore.

When he stumbled into his bed back at the Compound, he clutched the cell phone in his hand, cradling it in between his palms, wishing desperately that it was Tony himself.

Like always, the cell phone remained dark, and he closed his eyes to the coldness of it.

-

But in his dreams, Tony was right there in front of him. His back was turned, but still, he looked amazing with the gentle brown curls sitting atop his head and the way that his black tank top hugged his body.

“Tony,” Steve whispered.

As if he heard him, Tony began to turn around, his immaculate goatee perfectly trimmed on his face and his wide brown eyes gazing back at him. His eyes told of inexplicable hurt, and God, it never fails to agonize his heart looking at him like that. Steve’s chest filled with guilt. Those eyes were frightened of him.

“What do you want Rogers.” A statement, a tired one. And Steve fully deserved it too. Tony sighed and looked down, and Steve was ashamed to admit that it gave him a little more room to breathe.

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.” It was barely a breath, but in this quiet place, Tony heard every word.

And in a moment, Tony’s eyes blaze, and he prowled forward until he was a mere foot away. “You’re sorry,” he said flatly, poison dripping through every word. “You shouldn’t get to say ‘I’m sorry’ when you put a shield through my chest. We were _friends_ Rogers.”

Steve’s eyes glistened with tears. “I know. I took it too far, and I’m so sorry for letting you down. No. I let both you and Bucky down.”

Tony was silent, still, processing those words. “As far as apologies went,” Tony said, “your words were pitiful. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for two years, seeing you, and I’ve always expected that you were going to finish the job. I’ve regret trying to hurt Bucky, and I’ve always wanted to tell you that I was sorry.”

“But you’re not the one I should talk to, because you’re not real.”

-

He woke, gasping. For a moment, Tony was blinded and disoriented by this sudden change of scenery, and during that moment, Tony didn’t remember where he was. His heart jackrabbited wildly in his chest before realization and remembrance came flooding back in – he was on the Guardians’ ship, he was in space, and he was alone with Nebula for everyone else had turned to ashes. Tony sighed heavily, thumping his head back against the orange cushion of the chair, and he looked out into the emptiness.

 _The Benatar_ was miniscule compared to the donut which had carried him lightyears away from home. Tony never anticipated that he would live to see this side of the universe; he’d always imagined that he would die fighting on home turf, protecting Earth’s people. Now that he was here though, it brought him no comfort to imagine what was to come. The futurist felt wary, even afraid of the future; the things to come would be so much larger than what he could perhaps handle with his own technology and abilities. He looked out at the wide expanse, unseeing, as he held his cold helmet in his hands, its form scratched, dull, and dented. The coldness of the metal seeped into his palms, leeching heat from his body and leaving him desolate and lonely.

He was out of his depth here –

“Stark,” Nebula said, interrupting his musings. She turned her head and looked at him with a steady gaze, her grief carefully hidden in her eyes. Titan was just a miniscule speck behind them, the planet melding with the other stars and planets as they traveled further and further away from it. One of her hands was resting gently on the gear shift, although Tony suspected that it wasn’t doing anything. “Course has been set to Earth. We can make it to the planet in good time if we do a couple of strategic jumps. However, we do have a problem: we don’t have enough fuel to make the journey currently, and the nearest outpost is out of our way.”

“If we were to get to the outpost, what would be our timeframe of getting to Earth?” Tony asked.

Nebula was quiet for a moment, and her face flittered with fleeting expressions as she calculated it. Finally, she said, “Three weeks perhaps, maybe more. It would take us five days to reach the outpost, and then a little more than two weeks if all the wormholes are in working order.”

Tony itched to go home as soon as possible. He felt untethered while he was out in the middle of nowhere, alone, with no friends to lean upon. It was like Afghanistan, but worse, because there was no guarantee that he could escape from this like he did back then.

He just wanted to be back on solid ground and see Rhodey and Pepper, perhaps take comfort in their arms. God, he would even take Steve. Now more than ever, he hoped that Steve had forgiven him. He just wanted to look at Steve and say, “I’m sorry,” bury his face in his strong chest, and grieve for Peter. Now more than ever, he missed his friend, and his heart constricted at the thought of the loss of both his closest friend and the kid. He didn’t want to face yet another day realizing that he had just lost everything, and he was alone. “And if we don’t go to the outpost?” he asked her.

She replied, “We will be adrift in space until we reach our destination, and it would take longer to get to Earth than if we were to get to the outpost first.”

Logically, he knew that it was important to be prepared. He looked ahead, out into the vast multi-colored galaxy. Under other circumstances, Tony would have found the view pretty, the golden, blue, and magenta hues illuminating the universe, brightly colored white stars glowing brightly, not unlike the images NASA had taken with their satellites. But the situation was dire. No help would be coming for them, not in this corner of this forsaken galaxy. There would be no Avengers to have his back this time.

Tony bit his lip. “What do you propose we do?”

Tony met Nebula’s pitch-black eyes. “We should go to the outpost, refuel and restock,” she said. “We will be of no use if we die on our journey to defeat Thanos.”

“Hold up a second,” Tony interrupted hastily. “We didn’t discuss going back to fight Thanos again. We were just thoroughly defeated by him, and we were at full strength. How do you think we’re going to win when there are only two of us?”

“Half,” Nebula replied. “Thanos is a firm believer of the natural balance of the universe, so there would be half of us left.”

“Fine, half of us. But still, we couldn’t defeat Thanos at our best. What makes you think we can defeat him when our forces are depleted? Not to mention, he has all the Stones, so he could kill us with a snap of his fingers.”

Nebula’s voice was flat. “Because then I will have no purpose, and Thanos would be the ultimate ruler of the Universe, playing God to all. He is a madman, Stark, and he cannot have such power in his hands. There was a reason that all the stones were split in the first place – their power is too much for any one man to bear. Between you and I, I know him better: he played my father for decades, and Thanos ruined me completely, pitted me against Gamora, replaced me bit by bit with technology so that I could become stronger. He was a monster to me, and I became a monster because of him.” She growled here, grief and anger flashing on her face. She slammed a hand hard against the armrest, and the metal bent down at the force, creaking. “He killed my family, my original one, and then he killed Gamora, so it is my vow to end him and his reign of terror. Even if you don’t fight against Thanos, I plan to kill him, and with him, destroy the Infinity Stones so that no one else can do what he did.”

She stopped, sighed, anger deflating but grief still palpable on her face. “I know I will never defeat him myself no matter how many times I try, but I will die facing him so that no one else will have to suffer the same fate as we did.”

Tony didn’t have the energy to muster up the spirit that she had, but he understood her desperation. After all, he made Ultron for the sake of humanity, to protect Earth so that when the Avengers faced a foe greater than they could handle, Earth’s people would have had something to protect them. Even if their approaches were different, her style more offensive that his, he understood her.

“If you help me,” Nebula said when the silence dragged out for a long time, “if we defeat Thanos and take away the Infinity Stones from him, Earth can be protected. We can reverse his damage, but I can’t do this alone.”

“Okay.” Tony was tired. He didn’t want to do it, especially not with the rest of his team.

Ultimately though, he was an Avenger through and through, and he had a job to do. Protecting Earth from the Chitauri, from Thanos, for the sake of the rest of humanity was something he had signed up to do when he took the mantle of being a superhero. Now that everything was gone, he had nothing to lose, and the prospects of reversing what Thanos had done gave himself a mission he could look forward to.

Didn’t mean he had to like it. But then again, when did he get what he wanted?

“Okay,” he repeated more quietly, “We’ll go to the outpost, restock, and refuel.”

Nebula dipped her head in acknowledgement, and then she turned and faced forward, hand moving the steering wheel. Conversation over, the ensuing silence roared in Tony’s ears. The space between them felt too small for the abundance of pain between them – all the oxygen in the room felt like it had dissipated. He rose from his seat, desperate to get some room. “I’m going down, see what this spaceship has. Perhaps I can build something that could help us a little bit, get home a little faster.”

He had no intention just yet of doing that, but he needed an excuse to get as far away from her as possible. He didn’t wait for her to reply, tucking his helmet under his arm and headed towards the back where the ladder was. As he climbed down, he looked back to the utter sadness in Nebula’s posture, bowing over the armrest as she looked out at the wide and bottomless expanse of space.

Down below deck felt a lot more personal than up in the cockpit – remnants of the Guardians belongings were strewn all around the room. In this quietness, it felt only like a pause, like a sentry watch. It didn’t feel like a final silence for the dead. Tony stood still at the base by the ladder, gazing slowly from one side of the room to the other, taking stock of everything within his sight. Unfamiliar technology was intermingled with more familiar earthly ones, and Tony slowly, cautiously walked forward, brushing his fingers lightly over a shelf. “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” the cassette player said when he reached the Walkman, just one Earthly thing familiar in this unfamiliar room. It felt wrong to touch something that didn’t belong to him. It was unlike him to care about it, but knowing that he was touching dead mens’ stuff felt taboo. Still, he was drawn to the obsolete piece of tech – it was one connection to home. So Tony pressed the “play” button, letting the prongs roll and the stereo crackle to life.

_…That ain’t all, that ain’t all I’ll do for you_

_Oh, if you bring it to me_

_Bring your sweet loving…_

Tony stepped backwards one stumbling length at a time until he hit the wall, the music taking Tony back to his childhood.  These songs replaced the quietness, and Tony sagged down, letting the music wash over his weary body. For all its cheeriness, Tony couldn’t bring himself to feel more light-heartened, just overwhelmed by the loss and numb from the pain. For all the work he had done, it still wasn’t enough to face Thanos.

For a few hours, he would grieve for all that he lost. Then he would move on.

His eyes slipped shut, his mind whirling at a thousand miles per hour, reminiscing moment by moment of everything that came to head in this apocalyptic event, revisiting every decision that could have been changed so that the tragedy could have been avoided.

-

He was back in Red Room. Once dramatic and slightly frightening, the eerie starkness was just boring now. Tony paced the room, every footstep echoing hollowly. This…emptiness drove him out of his mind. It was a red room as far as the eye could see. He wished that he was back at his workshop. Or even on Earth.

He just wanted peace for once.

“Tony.”

“Oh my god, it’s you again,” Tony groaned, closing his eyes and tilting his head up in a mock approximation of supplication. He didn’t want to deal with _him_. He had too much on his plate to even work out the problems between them. “For once, can’t you just leave me alone? What is it this time? A shield to the chest? Strangling me with your bare hands? Poisoning me with your sad puppy eyes? What do I have to do _to get you to leave?”_

A beat passed, then a second one. Still, Tony’s eyes remained shut, waiting for something, anything. Then, Steve sighed quietly, and he folded the paper in his hands in half, then in half again, placing it gently on the ground in front of him.

It was a rendering of Tony, one that he had created while he stayed in Wakanda. Therefore, it was by far not a real life sketch, but he hoped it was enough of an apology for Tony, to show him what he imagined they could be. Tony was napping on the living room couch, legs taking the majority of the cushion space. Dangled preciously in one hand has his tablet, one moment away from falling to the ground. DUM-E was there right beside them even though Steve knew Tony rarely let the robot out of the workshop, and he hovered over Tony with a blanket held in his claw, moments away from putting over his slumbering body. Tony was gorgeous and soft in sleep, vulnerable and beautiful. But more importantly, his head was pillowed upon Steve’s legs, and he was there, seated, looking fondly down at him, and dare he say, with love. It felt so surreal to see the openness, the gentle smile graced on Steve’s face, his eyes crinkled with happiness.

Oh how Steve _ached_ that this scene was true, that he could have all of that and more. His throat constricted because this…this could never happen, not with the way Tony and Steve were separated after the Civil War, and now they’re literally a universe apart. The feeling hurt more than it should, and he _missed_ his family, missed the camaraderie of teammates, working together for a common cause. And he missed Tony. All he could conjure up for the longest time was the anger and the hatred that spread across his teammate’s face, not this open love and care that was shown on this page.

Steve walked away, the cadence of his footsteps carrying him away from Tony because he will do what Tony has requested. Tony deserved that and more.

-

He woke up with tears streaking down his face. His soul still ached, but his eyes were dry when he finally moved from his position. He peeled himself off the wall, mouth dry and face wet, and he rubbed his drying tears with the back of his hand. A bottle of water appeared in his sight. “Thanks,” Tony rasped, taking the bottle from Nebula’s hand. He drank with deep swallows, the chill of the water refreshing his body.

She watched him in silence until he was finished with the bottle before she said, “We should begin working on a plan to find Thanos. The longer we wait, the reversal process would have worse consequences.”

“Do you have an idea?” Tony asked, putting aside his personal problems to do the task at hand. He could do this, this thinking part because that was who he was, to be first and foremost the innovative thinker.

Nebula shook her head. “I’m a fighter and an assassin, not a scientist.”

Tony hummed. “I do know is that the Infinity Stones emit a wavelength no matter where they are, separated or together. The stones being together would create a much more concentrated pulse. If you can create something that would hone the signal, you would get Thanos too.”

Already, his mind was creating a hundred different scenarios and he moved forward slowly, eyes cataloguing the inventory of the ship, leaving Nebula behind with a fleeting thought. Spare metal was haphazardly stored away on one of the shelves; he had some nanites left from the fight, and he had done some research on Vision’s stone. He could scrap the holoscreen for his own use, and he was sure there was a sensor on this ship somewhere so that he could find the stones. If he knew the energy wavelength…Tony bit his lip, stopping in front of the dark screen. He reached out a hand to touch it, tilting it so that he could reveal the wiring in the back of the screen.

“Friday,” he called out absently, fingers digging into the mess of wires, “Start a new file project – “ Tony trailed off when he glanced up inadvertently and then remembered that he wasn’t in his workshop. No AI was installed on this ship. His face fell slightly, and his heart panged, feeling more lonely than ever. He shook his fingers loose from the wires and stepped back. “I guess I have to do it the old-fashioned way,” he muttered, moving to find paper and pen.

He found his paper but also found a box of old electronics, mostly burnt out and long-obsolete stored in a corner of the ship. He rifted through it, noting the broken wiring and cracks of monitors. They were not ideal scraps, but with time, Tony could probably reuse them for something.

Going back into the old and familiar routine of creating helped keep his mind off the fact that he was still in the middle of nowhere and creating a sensor that could help the search drew his attention away from his dire situation and into something he could control. Tony rolled the pen between the fingers of one hand and absently drummed his other hand against his thigh. Both legs were on the seat crisscrossed, and blank pieces of paper were strewn about at the base of the chair. The pages were blank – they would be for a while yet because paper on the ship were spare and Tony had to conserve for the final product – but already Tony had an idea in his mind, not only to use the sensor on the ship, but also improve it to extend its range as far as possible. He built upon the idea, bringing the pieces together. Finally, he grasped the idea and blankly reached for a sheet of paper, drafting his design by hand.

The initial draft looked crude and messy, looking nothing like the sophisticated equipment Tony had made. He wasn’t even sure if the thing would work, because he would need to do tests to find the stones. He hoped that the sensor would be able to catch on to the wavelength of the stones. _Perhaps_ …Tony thought absently, wracking his mind and sifting old information. He had done research on the Mind Stone thanks to Vision and his patience with Tony’s eagerness to do tests on the Stone. It’s been several years already since the initial research, and much of the knowledge he had acquired during that time had been overwritten by newer knowledge and research. Still, if he could just figure out the wavelength of the Mind Stone, he would be able to find Thanos.

He needed Bruce’s knowledge to finish this.

The thought of Vision hit him. With the knowledge that Thanos had taken all the stones, it was inevitable that Vision was dead or severely disabled – the Mind Stone had created him.  His heart constricted – yet another one was gone. _Both Vision and JARVIS were_...Tony screwed his eyes shut, trying to block out the rapid thoughts that connected logic together. He hadn’t seen Vision before he left Earth; he knew that Vision sometimes disappeared. Vision was his own person, able to move as he pleased, so Tony respected that independence. But now, had he known that he would be out here alone, he would have cherished the rest of his time with the rest of his family. No JARVIS, no FRIDAY, DUM-E or U to keep him company.

He didn’t know whether being out here in space was worse or better than Afghanistan. On one hand, he was not being tortured at the hands of his enemies. There were no life threatening hole in his chest or the dire situation of drowning or the pressure to create weapons. On the other hand, being out here in the vast nothingness had its own problems because there was no escape. The ship was its own prison cell, merely sustaining him but providing nothing to distract him from the gravity of the situation that they were in. Back then, he had something to look forward to when he escaped: Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, America. This time, there was no promise that he could do the same because out here in the unknown, the enemy was nature.

Nature would always eventually win.

Tony slumped, feeling defeated. There was no way Tony would be able to overcome this obstacle.

Unable to tolerate the sinking spiral of depression that threatened to send him over the edge, Tony quickly resolved to find something to keep himself busy. Maybe another AI, one that would keep him company on their way home. He had more time on his hands now as they cruised in space, and his fingers itched to create just so his mind would not go insane. He rose up from his chair and leapt over the mess of papers on the floor, heading towards the box of scraps. With a little bit of wiring, a little bit of tweaking, Tony could create something from next to nothing.

The box of scraps was still where he last left it in a mess of tangled wires and broken screens. Another search around the ship revealed the tools he needed to build: soldering iron, pliers, wire cutters, strippers. The equipment here weren’t as robust as his toolbox at home, but it was enough for Tony to begin laying all the wires down and rewiring them for his own use. The hard disks and the RAM were in another pile, waiting and ready to be used for his project. “Awesome Mix Vol. 2” played in the background as he worked, fingers steady and sure as he built. With his eyes focused on the project in front of him, everything else fell into the wayside.

Slowly and surely, the hardware component of the AI formed under his hands, wires connecting from one place to another. When the motherboard was finally placed into the box, Tony sighed and looked up. His eyes were dry from staring down for so long, but his heart was calmer and more settled than before.

“You done?” Nebula asked. Tony looked to the side to see her looking at him. In moments, a wave of exhaustion crashed over him, and he slumped back into his chair.

Tony swallowed, throat dry. “How long was I working?” he rasped. He stood up and nearly fell as dizziness swept over him and he closed his eyes, waiting for his equilibrium to come back. Food and water…that may be a good idea.

“Sixty-two hours.” Nebula followed him as he grabbed water and food from the kitchen. “We’re six hours away from the outpost, and when we get there, it won’t take too long to refuel and get more food. Then we can head towards Earth.” As Tony munched on dry biscuits, Nebula asked, “What are you making?”

“Trade secrets,” Tony said. He felt better now that food settled in his empty stomach, but his eyes also nearly shut under their own volition. However, he also saw the way Nebula looked unimpressed by his answer. Besides, now wasn’t the time to be cocky, so he amended, “I’m building an AI that could calibrate to the ship.”

“Fascinating. Not sure if the Guardians would appreciate the modifications of their ship.” Nebula’s voice was flat, but Tony had an inkling that she was attempting dry humor. “But they’re not here, so I guess they can’t complain.”

“They should be honored I’m making upgrades on their ship,” Tony retorted. “It’s not very often I offer my services for free.”

“I know Quill is very particular about people tampering with his ship. He nearly killed Rocket after he took off with one of the chairs.”

“How did that go?”

“Rocket came back with a ring for Gamora. Peter didn’t know whether to strangle him or kiss him.” Nebula huffed in amusement, and Tony was hit with yet another pang at the mention of “ring.”

God, Pepper. He missed her. He hope she survived this. But even if she was still alive, there was no chance that she would take him back again. Every time he promised her that he would stop being a superhero, he turned around and broke that promise. Tony closed his eyes. There was no way for him to retire after this mess, if he ever got back to Earth. He sighed and tuned back to hear Nebula say, “You should get some sleep before we land. We may encounter hostiles while we’re down there, and it would be better if we were prepared and well-rested.”

Sleep didn’t sound like a bad idea, although Tony still dreaded slipping back into his nightmares. So he scoffed, “Sleep is for the weak” as the last bite of biscuits disappeared.

Despite his words, the way that Nebula looked at him disapprovingly had him heading towards the bunks, and besides, and he _was_ indeed exhausted from his binge. Before his head hit the pillow, he was asleep.

-

This time, he saw Steve standing there in front of him. He was dressed in sweats and a white t-shirt that stretched across his pecs and chest. Steve looked good, even being away for so long and his face worn with sadness and regret. Steve cradled his sketchbook in his hands.

The sketch that Steve had left behind last time was still in his hand, staring back at him innocently. Tony exhaled. “What is this?” Tony asked dully. “What game are you playing at?”

Steve shook his head. “I’m not playing any games,” Steve replied, words slow and hesitant.

“Please,” Tony whispered. He turned the paper around, nearly ripping it in his haste, looking at the picture again. “Don’t lie to me. This is worse than when you stuck a shield in my chest. You walked away from me.”

Tony looked up from the image, staring at the figure in front of him. Suddenly, he couldn’t bear seeing Steve, so he turned around, walked a few steps away from the image of the man. “This got to be a new form of nightmares,” Tony mumbled, “This is my head showing me what I can’t have, ever.”

“I love you,” Steve bursted out behind him. Tony stilled, heart pounding hard. Steve sounded breathless, desperate.

_No._

Tony whirled around. “You can’t tell me you love me after you hurt me -” Tony prowled forward again until he was merely a few steps away, and he looked at Steve dead in the eye. “- so I’ll ask you again: _what game are you playing at?_ ”

“Please. Hear me out,” Steve begged. “I’m sorry.” Steve raised his hand slowly, outstretched towards Tony. But Tony couldn’t bear his touch. Not now at least, not when he knew it wasn’t real. Tony took a small step back, just barely out of reach, and Steve’s face fell.

“Is that all you can say Steve? For two years, I had dreams of you killing me in that HYDRA bunker, over, and over, and over, and over…” Tony’s voice trailed off. “At least with that, I expected your anger. I was angry too.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did, Steve. And I hurt you too, but now though? This hurts more than anything else.” Tony shook his head, and tears began to leak out of his eyes. “I miss you. I miss Pepper and Rhodey. I hate space.”

But most of all, “I wanna go home.”

Steve’s eyes were wet, and his voice was thick when he said, “Come home, Tony.”

Oh, how Tony wished this was real. “Will you be there?” he whispered.

But he never got an answer, for…

-

…The last vestiges of the dream faded away to Nebula’s hand shaking his body. “Wake up Stark,” she said, pulling her hand away once she saw that Tony wasn’t in danger of going back to sleep, “We’re near the outpost.”

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbled. “Thanks.” He got up, walked to the cockpit, and sat in one of the seats. He felt numb and passive, looking out the window to see the stars shining and waiting listlessly as the ship cruised towards the outpost. Somehow, despite the feeling of intangibility the dream, he still remembered the images crystal clear in his mind’s eye, and he latched upon it, directing his thoughts inwards.

He didn’t get it. Why was he getting _these_ dreams now? What had changed? Tony quickly determined that the most plausible explanation was the side effect of the snap – somehow, the nature of his dreams (or nightmares) changed, although Tony couldn’t prove this at all. Maybe magic, but he didn’t really believe in magic. But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what had changed.

Steve never liked him that way, in the way that the image implied, that was for sure; his mind must be performing tricks on him. It was…incongruent to the letter Steve had written two years ago. Tony had it memorized by now after rereading it so many times that the words became meaningless.  Steve _couldn’t_ have liked him that way because otherwise, he wouldn’t have hurt Tony this badly. And perhaps it was both of their faults, but the twinge of betrayal still lingered at the back of his mind. Steve’s self-deprecating attitude hurt – the family that were the Avengers was fractured, and contrary to what he had said, about being alone, he wasn’t _truly_ alone. In the end, it was Tony who was alone instead, betrayed, left behind, trying to fix the broken pieces. Tony was skeptical of whatever game Steve was playing at.

He didn’t want to get hurt again.

Yet, there was an inkling of hope, perhaps even a reconciliation, with the sketch.

A shallow shudder of the ship landing startled Tony out of his thoughts, but what he expected to look outside was not this: a city laid to waste, not unlike the way Titan was destroyed. The decrepit outpost was devoid of any lifeforms or resources, soot settled on every available surface. What was not covered by the blackened area was streaked with dried blood.

“Oh my god,” Tony whispered in horror, stumbling out of the ship. “Did Thanos do this?”

“It couldn’t be,” Nebula replied lowly, walking beside him. She looked out, graven. “Thanos doesn’t believe in eliminating entire populations. And fire isn’t his style. We did eliminate half the population a long time ago, but we haven’t touched this outpost since. Someone else must have done this.”

They walked through the city with careful steps, pieces of rubble crunching underneath their shoes. Nothing was spared by the fire. “We made the wrong choice,” Tony said. “We’re not…we’re not going to get home. We don’t have enough fuel.”

Nebula exhaled heavily, sounding very close to defeat, and Tony swallowed.

“No,” Tony corrected. He looked out at the derelict buildings, imagining the screams and despair on these streets during their last moments. No, he wasn’t going to have it. He repeated, voice slightly firmer now, “No.”

“I can get us home,” Tony spoke quietly into the silence with the intensity of benediction. “Use some nanites, reroute the power to maximize efficiency. We’ll regroup, and we’ll then fight” This what he was made to do – this was what his mind was built for: to create under pressure. He needed to know if what he was dreaming about was indeed only a dream, but he needed to know who was still alive; he wasn’t going to die alone out here if he could help it. Besides, Thanos needed to go.

“Can you do that?” Nebula asked, skeptical. “We barely have anything on the ship.”

Tony nodded vigorously. “I once built a suit out of a box of scraps in a cave. This time, I have a ship. I built an AI with scraps. The least I can do is to get us home.” Then, he looked at Nebula, honey brown eyes intense with perseverance. “I can do this. We’re going to Earth, and I’m going to need an extra set of hands to help me create the things we need to get them.”

Nebula looked down, fists clenching briefly before releasing them just as quickly. “You have them,” Nebula replied.

“Set course to Earth,” Tony decided, turning back to the ship.


	2. Chapter 2

II. FREE FALL

“Are you sure that this was Fury’s car?”

Natasha nodded. “I’m sure. The plate’s his. And even if that is not entirely telling, the fact that the car had been modified to carry an arsenal of weapons does.”

Indeed it did, when Steve peered in through the driver’s window. Stolen SHIELD tech had outfitted the interior of the car.

“You think he’s gone?”

She pursed her lips. “There’s a high likelihood that he is. There’s no way he would leave the car out here hanging when the risk of it going into the wrong hands are too high. No, he would have blown up the car first before fleeing. I think he was gone in the snap.”

There was a silence that fell between them, and it took all of Steve’s self-control not to lash out and curse the world at the unfairness. However, the self-control wasn’t enough for him to kick a piece of rock out of his way, and Steve watched it fly in the air before it bounced and rolled to a stop beside a small rectangular…

Steve, as if in a trance, picked up the beeping box. It wasn’t a piece of Stark tech, that was for sure. It fit the palm of his hand, and Steve brushed away the dust on it. There was only one button and a fading small screen, like it was dying.

“I haven’t seen this in years,” Natasha said, breaking his trance. Steve looked over to see her standing beside him staring at the thing in his hand. Glancing at his confused look, she clarified, “It’s essentially obsolete because Tony had been providing us with new and high-tech stuff. It’s a communicator, a very old one. It’s been out of commission from the Army for decades.”

“Do you think this might be his?” Steve asked.

“I’ve never seen this on his person, but we can check once we get back to the Compound. May I?” Steve nodded, and Natasha plucked it from his hand and eyed it critically. “Nick isn’t one to be sentimental, so if this indeed is truly his, then there will be some purpose to this. It’s certainly possible that this is his. Anyway, if he indeed was calling someone, then we’ll need to charge this up.”

Back at the Compound, Bruce placed the communicator between two clips. “It’s Fury’s alright,” he said, typing rapidly on his keyboard. “I’m running tests on it right now, but it’s a long-distance communicator, possibly off-world. Whatever signal this is going to, it may take a while.”

“A while we don’t have,” Steve argued.

“But it may be our only lead to fix all this,” Natasha said. She looked at the communicator. “Keep it powered up. Let’s hope that whoever’s on the other side while get the message, and not be gone as well."

\- -

Dreams. That were all they were. Yet, Tony craved them every time he closed his eyes because those were the only times that it felt like home. When he stood there in front of him in his dreams, Tony could breathe more easily because it was _Steve_ right in front of him – his best friend, his –

No. He shouldn’t go there. He wasn’t his, after all.

But Steve stood there, his golden locks shining under the red glow of the room, merely a few steps away, and Tony only had to stretch his arm partially to feel the tangibility of the man in front of him. But he didn’t, not yet at least. He didn’t know whether it was that fragile, tentative hope he had within himself that he could still have him eventually, or self-punishment that he didn’t have him that stopped Tony from reaching out to the man in front of him. His throat burned, and his heart constricted tightly in his chest. He both loved and hated the man in front of him.

“Sometimes I still am mad at you,” Tony admitted, glancing down for a moment before looking back up at Steve again. “Sometimes I want to punch you in the face because you deserve it for hurting me.” Tony took a daring step closer, just one step closer in being able to touch the man in front of him. He wanted to. He despised himself for wanting to because Steve had hurt him. 

It was an instinctive thing when Tony curled his right hand into a fist, and Steve’s face fell when he saw the movement. “Do it,” he whispered, and Tony could see in his eyes that he was quietly accepting his fate. He wasn’t going to turn his back; he wasn’t going to fight either. “I deserve it.”

“Goddamnit Steve,” Tony yelled back, shaking his fist in between them. He was sick of Steve’s passivity – he needed to know why he did the things he did; the letter wasn’t enough for him to understand the motives behind the decisions. “Don’t play the good cop on me! I trusted you to have my back, and all you did was keep such a large secret from me!”

“I didn’t know that Bucky hurt Howard and your mother, not for sure. Back then, I only had an inkling that something happened between Bucky and Howard,” Steve finally said. Good. Tony felt less guilty when Steve defended himself. “I didn’t want to tell you before I could say for sure.”

Tony turned and stomped away, anger boiling within him. But he didn’t go far; he couldn’t really walk away – he just had to know the truth. “I cared about you, Steve!” Tony burst out, still facing away. He couldn’t bear to see the man who had hurt him so much. “Friends don’t do this! I would have liked to know about this!”

To his back, Steve replied, “I care about you!” While the words were softly spoken, they were emphatic.

And it felt so wrong too. Tony spun around. “Do you?” he asked aggressively. “Do you really? I don’t see it.”

“It’s _Bucky_ , Tony. I couldn’t just leave him behind; he was my best friend and he was a victim here!”

“And you were my friend too! Yes, he may have been a victim under HYDRA’s hand, but those were my _parents,_ Steve _._ That’s no excuse to try to hide that information from me.

By now, Steve and Tony were merely inches from each other, glaring with angry eyes. Steve opened his mouth but nothing came out as he tried to come up with a response.

“Stop trying to cling onto the past that is no longer there.”

Steve shook his head in denial. “No, that’s…no. Not true. I care about the present as well – I _live_ in the present.”

Tony’s eyes were cold as ice and boiling as hot as fire. It wasn’t the Tony he wanted to see, if Steve admitted. But it wasn’t fair at all, to hear Tony accusing him of all that. It _was_ Bucky, for crying out loud! He was the one who had his back since he was a kid, and he wasn’t going to ever abandon him, even if he changed since he was Lieutenant James Buchanan Barnes…despite his changes.

Why couldn’t Tony see that?

And now Bucky was gone too.

But before the weight of Bucky’s death crashed over him, Steve saw the way Tony was preparing for a verbal war. His spine straightened, his face took on an intense look, and he seemed deceptively casual. He was sure that, with the way Tony stalked closer with fire in his eyes, Steve wouldn’t like what he had to say.

“Oh, is that why you chased Bucky down all these years? Because you live in the present? Grow a pair, Rogers. You’re stuck chasing the past, and you know it– “

It was an accident. It truly was. But Steve had been always a boy from Brooklyn, and Tony’s words scraped Steve raw, cutting him to pieces even within the dream.

Steve’s fist was stopped short, stilled by an invisible force that stood between the two men.

And he was horrified by his actions – even more so when Tony took a step back in surprise, a belated second after his fist had been already stopped in midair. They looked down at Steve’s fist, pressed against the invisible wall between them. Guilt swallowed Steve whole.

Steve’s heart shattered to pieces when Tony stared back at him, eyes filled with betrayal. Steve took a hasty step back, mouth already forming to apologize.

“Do I really mean so little to you?” Tony asked.

“Stop, Tony. I’m – “

But Tony was already gone.

\- -

“ – sorry,” he whispered aloud. Hot tears dampened Steve’s pillow, and he opened his eyes to the darkness of his room. The flip phone remained silent and dark, only warm because he cradled it in his palm as he slept.

He didn’t deserve it, not with the way he hurt Tony yet _again._

With a sudden cry, Steve hurled the phone away. A second later, from the darkness, the sound of crunching was heard, followed by the softer muffled sounds of the pieces from the phone falling towards the ground.

He didn’t mean to do that.

(He didn’t mean to do a lot of things.)

Steve finally noticed that his breaths were harsh and loud in the dead silence, a silence that is similar to the one in his dream. He couldn’t take this. Tony had never ripped him apart in his dreams so viciously in his dreams. Those words…they were new, and Steve had never imagined the situation that way.

They were only dreams – that were supposed to be all they were. But they also felt so real.

Perhaps…perhaps these dreams _were_ real, and Tony was truly facing him on the other side. It certainly felt that way; the wall between them felt tangible, and the cutting remarks that Tony said to Steve were nothing that he had imagined.

There was a fleeting hope within his chest as well as slight despair.

There would be no more sleep tonight, and there was no longer any point of staying in bed. “Lights at thirty percent,” Steve croaked out, mouth dry, and the lights turned on. Even as he moved towards the gym, the words played over and over in his mind, and they wired him up. It couldn’t be true. He lived in the present. He had Bucky back, he had Sharon, Sam, Natasha…

The feeling of the bag pressed against his knuckles loosened the jittery feelings within his chest, and his muscles relaxed, finding solace in a familiar motion. Thoughts of his dream faded away like an ocean breeze, and he focused on the flow of the swinging bag, jabbing on one side, then on the other. Huffs were interspersed between hits and sweat dripped down his forehead. It was a good way to release the stress of the past several days.

Going out every day, seeing the hopelessness in the civilians’ eyes were devastating because the Avengers didn’t do their job right. And even as they walked out in full uniform with supplies and a willing hand, Steve always felt that underneath their despair was accusations for not doing more. Steve may be able to brush the thoughts aside, but facing that constant failure wore him down too.

It built up.

Steve exhaled harshly, letting the thoughts simmer down. With one final punch, he threw his body into one last kick, and the chains holding up the bag snapped sharply. Steve panted, feeling the blood from his knuckles drip down his digits and onto the floor, one patter at a time. The punching bag landed on its side with one final thud, and Steve’s ears rang in the ensuing silence.

He felt a presence behind him.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

Someone moved, footsteps completely silent – just a whisper of air signaled the movement from behind him. “Just like you,” Natasha replied. Steve turned around when she was merely a few feet away. She was dressed in a tight-fitting grey t-shirt and black leggings. Her hair was pulled back in a braid that began at the top of her scalp to just at the base of her neck.  She was gorgeous, and she looked…tired. Her eyes flickered down momentarily before she looked up again. “Willing to go a few rounds on the mat?”

Steve nodded. The skin on his knuckles were no longer broken, and he still could use some more release. “Let me wash my hands first.”

Hands cleaned, Steve stepped into the ring where Natasha awaited. As one, they settled into the default fighting stance, balancing their weight at the balls of their feet, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. Their hands were out, body turned slightly away from each other, and Steve watched Nat like a hawk. After so long, they were attuned to each other’s quirks and styles, but it never helped when Natasha lashed out like a cheetah when Steve least expected it. It was a game between them, waiting to see who would break the waiting and concentration first.

This time, it was him – he couldn’t wait for her to make the first move when he still had some pent-up emotion deep within himself, and he pushed forward, jabbing towards her head, before he followed it with a solid roundhouse kick, swinging his leg around and striking with his elbow. Nat blocked every punch and dodged every kick with ease, countering with her own quick jabs before she maneuvered away. It was a complicated, deadly dance between them where they didn’t have to hold back their strength.

Nat: 3, Steve: 1. Steve: 5, Nat: 4. And on and on they went, blocking fists, grappling bodies, twisting around each other continuously as minutes, hours ticked by, until the sun came up and they finally stopped, panting hard from the exertion. Sweat dripped down their faces and Natasha’s hair no longer was in a braid. Steve was sure that he didn’t look much better.

“You’re going to tell me what’s on your mind?” Natasha finally asked. She passed him a rag before she took the spray bottle and sprayed the disinfectant on the mats.

Steve got down and wiped the mess away. “Had a dream earlier.” He paused, deliberating his words before he asked, “Tell me Nat: am I chasing the past? I’ve always believed myself to be a soldier out of time, but I thought I adapted pretty well to the modern world. Yet, does it seem that I’ve been trying to hold on to my old self?”

“I think you adapted pretty well, given your circumstances over the last ten years, considering that you’ve been revived for ten years.” Natasha sat down at the edge of the ring as Steve continued to clean the floor. “Tony really helped you catch up to the present, and Sam was as well. Considering that none of this existed in your time –“ here she waved her hand in a vague motion, you learned quickly. I think it’s easy to forget that you’re not from this time.”

“But Bucky brought out the reminder that you still had the past,” Natasha continued. Steve threw the wet rag into the used towel bin before he sat across from her. “You wanted the best for him. He was your best friend, and you would do anything to save him.”

Steve agreed. Bucky deserved all that and more. He was there in his life since the beginning, fighting with him and being the best friend one could ever have no matter the circumstances. Likewise, Steve wanted to be the best friend Bucky was to Steve. “But you have to remember, too, Bucky wasn’t the same person from back then. He went through HYDRA’s brainwashing program. He couldn’t be the same person you knew him as. And as much as you wanted him to be your best friend again, the relationship between you and him couldn’t be the same. He was someone else, you are…timeless, and you had to relearn each other. Had you had the time, your relationship could have probably been better, but as it stood, you couldn’t face the fact that he was someone else.”

“Why are you thinking about this now?” Natasha’s gaze wasn’t accusatory, just curious.

 “I’ve been having these dreams. I’m in this room, and Tony’s in it too. He’s been telling me…things, and one of them was the fact that I’ve been stuck chasing the past. I don’t know if I’m just crazy or...I’ve never really thought about these things before.”

Natasha stayed silent, and Steve found himself spilling more than he intended. He never told anyone about that day in Siberia before, and now it all tumbled out. “We went to Siberia, Bucky and I, and Tony showed up. He was there to help us out, but then he found out that Bucky killed his parents. Zemo showed it to Tony, and Tony snapped when he found out. Tried to kill Bucky.” Steve shook his head. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

“That’s definitely a way to reveal something,” Nat murmured, and Steve laughed wetly.

“It was bad. I hurt Tony in the process. I had an inkling that Bucky killed his parents while he was still the Winter Soldier, but I didn’t know for sure, and Tony took it badly. He attacked both of us, but Bucky was my best friend! I couldn’t just let Tony kill him.”

“But you were trying to spare yourself pain by not telling him.”

“I know.” Steve wiped his dampened eyes with the back of his hand. “I knew that after we went to Wakanda. God, I screwed up.”

“It was wrong,” Natasha agreed, “But it’s not about the fact that you’re stuck chasing the past necessarily. Yes, there are some elements that you wanted to hold on to your past life because you missed it, but you also put Bucky over Tony. It probably implied to him that he mattered less to you than Bucky.” She looked down, plucked an imaginary lint off of her pants, and Steve watched as she braced herself to say, “Tony loved you. When you chose Bucky over him, especially with something as important as that, it probably killed him.”

“No.” Steve was horrified, and he shook his head in denial. Any thought otherwise would mean something worse – he had ruined his friendship that day, and he couldn’t bear to hear this news because it meant so much more.. “There’s no way he could have loved me.”

Natasha looked up again. “He loved you,” she argued back. “Everyone knew that. You were his favorite. But I don’t think you realize how much he cared for you.”

“He never mentioned it.”

“I wouldn’t think so, but he always gave you more attention than the rest of us. So, to go back to your question, maybe perhaps you were stuck holding onto the past, forgetting that times have changed since then.”

Steve’s eyes burned. With this revelation and a third perspective, Steve began to realize that _he_ was the anomaly here. He really messed up, and now Bucky was gone, and Tony was nowhere on Earth. “He loved me,” he said quietly.

Natasha nodded, eyes pitying and sad.

“But, it’s all gone now.”

“We’ve got to move on.” Nat was sympathetic. “We need to move forward because we can’t change the past. Not in this way at least. We don’t have the resources to change the past right now, so we need to move on.”

He should move on - he didn’t know whether Tony was gonna come home alive or not, but as long as the dream felt real, he was going to hold on to it and believe. There was no way, now that he knew that Tony loved him, that he was going to give him up now, as long as there was a chance that he was still alive.

“Any lead on the communicator?” Steve asked.

Natasha shook her head, and the way her face fell matched his own disappointment. “It might be early yet, but there’s a chance that the trail is cold.”

“I wish…” Steve hesitated, “I wish there could have been more that we could have done, to stop this all from happening.”

“Don’t we all wish that?”

They looked past each other, not exactly meeting eye to eye, but just off to the side in silence, sitting there on the mat as the sweat cooled on their body. There was no way they could believe that; they couldn’t move on, no matter how many times Nat tried to convince themselves that it was the best solution. It was fooling no one.

“I found Clint,” Nat said quietly, out of the blue. “He’s out there doing contract killing.”

Steve bit his lip. “What about his family?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer because, even if he had only met them once, he still considered them as part of the Avenger’s family. And they took care of each other. But if they were gone, that was three more people dead because of the snap.

Guilt welled up in his chest again.

“They’re…” Natasha swallowed and cleared her throat before she tried again, “I couldn’t find them. It’s highly that they’re dead. Snapped. But it’s Clint, Steve. We can’t just leave him alone out there. I’m going after him.”

“Okay.” They couldn’t really spare people, but Steve agreed with her. They could use another hand to help, and Clint was still family. “It’s going to be just you though; we can’t spare more resources.”

Nat nodded, and Steve pressed a comforting hand upon her shoulder.

“Be safe.”

-

Another day of work, repairing what was broken, but Steve couldn’t help but think back and replay the conversation over and over in his head. Out there, the people needed them to do their job, and they collected the bodies of the dead, righted up what they could, leaving what they couldn’t. They marked the dead in mass gravestones, too many to count, not enough bodies to match the names. At the end of the day, Steve stared up at “James Buchanan Barnes,” blinking back tears because the pain was still raw and hurting.

There’s also another feeling in his chest that he only realized now. It’s…a flutter of his heart when Steve recalled the outline of Tony’s face, the crease of sadness in his eyes, and the downturn of his lips. He…

He _loved_ him, and he hurt him badly.

He’s not here to tell him he’s sorry. His body filled with rage, and then regret for not realizing what he had done earlier. Now, Tony was only just a memory. A dream.

He thought back to it. A dream, no confirmation of which Tony was alive or dead. Yet, Steve felt like he wasn’t dead; he was alive and out there, somewhere. And perhaps his dream wasn’t just a dream.

He had dreamed about Tony before, and back then, he wasn’t so untouchable. Steve could stand in front of him and brush his hand gently down Tony’s cheek, caressing him sweetly in his palm in the way he would never be able to do so in real life. Now, however, the cold and cutting words were more like nightmares, and it stirred up anger from deep within his soul until he wanted to fight.

Then his anger dissipated and left exhaustion in its wake. After all, he shouldn’t have been angry over something that was partly his fault. He just…he wanted to apologize correctly this time, make every word mean it because he wanted him back safe and sound.

After a long day out there, Steve flopped back onto his bed and closed his eyes.

\- -

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing that came out of his mouth when he saw him next.

“I feel like you’re always sorry,” Tony said tiredly. Steve nodded, clenched his teeth.

“I know it’s pitiful, but I’m still sorry.” Steve sighed, and he looked away for a moment, over Tony’s shoulder. Obviously, there’s nothing there, but he can’t bear to look at Tony else he get cold feet and forget to say what he needed to get off his chest. “You mean so much to me, and I realize that now. You’ve definitely been there for me when I needed you, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t when you needed me. You were right: you’re my friend too.”

Finally, Steve looked at Tony, taking in the way his honey-brown eyes shone dimly under the red light. Tony deserved this and more. He needed to face his fears, get the words off his chest, tell Tony while he looked at him in the eyes. “But you’re more than that –“

“Stop,” Tony commanded. There was trepidation in his eyes. “If you’re going to say what I think you’re about to say, please don’t. Please don’t give me hope.”

“But –“

Tony held up a hand, and he slowly placed it against the invisible wall between them. Tony swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with the motion, and Steve lifted his hand to match it. “Please, if you could do one thing for me,” Tony whispered, “don’t tell me. I’ve been thinking, looking at these clues. I thought you, for a long time, were just a figment of my imagination, but there is no way that my imagination could hurt me so badly, or that my imagination could respond so…viscerally. You can’t be anything but real. It’s really you just on the other side of this barrier.”

Steve wished he could get closer to Tony, had the chance to really touch him, but the damn barrier was in the way, blocking him from even feeling the warmth of his palm on the other side of the wall. “I’m…” his voice was thick. “I’m really here. It’s me.”

“Yeah,” Tony replied. He sighed heavily. “God, sharing a dreamscape, working out our problems in our minds, while we sleep, and we can’t do it face to face.”

“We are face to face,” Steve pointed out.

Tony gave him a look. “You know what I mean. This damned fucking wall.” Tony banged his fist against it (strange that it made no noise), and then he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the barrier. He sighed again, tired. And old. He sounded like he aged twenty years. “I miss you.”

Steve pressed his forehead against the wall as well, and he closed his eyes. If he concentrated, he imagined that he could feel the echo of heat pressing radiating through the wall. It was still cold under his skin, but he could imagine, just this one moment, think that Tony was just right next to him. He said softly, “I miss you too. Please come home safely and alive because there is so much I want to tell you, so much that you deserve to hear.”

He _loved_ him.

“I’m working on it.” Tony’s eyes drip with fat, silent tears rolling down his face. _I’m coming home to you._

\- -

When Tony awoke this time on the spaceship, he felt calmer and more relaxed. He finally made peace with Steve. Any lingering anger dissipated as he woke up, leaving determination in its wake.

If what he thought what Steve was going to say to him in the dreamscape were the same words that he thought about Steve, he needed to get home. He had something to look forward to, walking down firma terra to face Steve and have him tell those words face to face. It gave him an inkling of hope.

Broken wire, scraps, and equipment spread out across the table, waiting to be used. Tony needed to fix the ship up as best he can up first so that it could take them home. A scan of the engine showed that there was a crack that leaked fuel out into the negative zone. He sealed the crack, but he gnawed his lips in worry all the same. Who knew how long fuel had been leaking out of the engine? It didn’t bode well, especially with the fact that they had little fuel left to begin with.

They couldn’t change the past; they can only hope for the best for the future. Hence, once Tony had finished making his routine checks of the ship, all he and Nebula had left to do was to sit, wait, let _The Benetar_ drift home at a snail’s pace. Tony settled in front of the monitor.

“Wake up, we’ve got work to do,” Tony said. He clapped his hands twice.

The monitor whirred to life. “Calibrating,” it said. “Good evening, Mr. Stark.”

Tony sighed. “It’s morning. As morning as it can be.”

“My apologies, Mr. Stark,” the AI said. “Considering you have not configured a set time in my program, I am making my best guess.”

“So young and already so snarky. I should dismantle you.” Tony shook his head. He would never do that though because it was his last tangible tie to _him_ , and he couldn’t bear to shut him down when it was all he had left in this place. Still, he was glad that he could emulate some of Steve’s snark in STEVE. “And how many times do I have to tell you to call me Tony?”

So far away, all he wanted was someone familiar, and STEVE provided that bittersweet comfort on this ship.

STEVE replied, “Of course, Tony. Unfortunately, however, I do not have enough memory to retain that information into my permanent memory because you need that space for other, more important work.”

“And my name isn’t important?” Tony snarked.

“Compared to finding the Infinity Stones, I think your name is less important, Tony.”

Tony huffed in resignation. “I can never win with you. But since you were so kind to mention it, please pull it up.”

“Of course.”

He slowly sat down as the Stones pulled up on screen. He couldn’t believe something so small and so pretty could have a such devastating effect on the world and the entire universe. The pain in his chest had numbed, but it was still raw remembering the loss of everyone on that planet. Especially Peter.

He hated the Stones with a passion, and no amount of looking at it would diminish that utter despise of them.

Balancing the world, his ass. More like trying to play God when Thanos wasn’t one.

The only chance that they had for reversing the process was searching them out again,

-

Tony pressed his hands against his eyes. No leads whatsoever in finding any signal of the Stones. He sighed tiredly.

“Take a break,” Nebula suggested. Rustling suggested that she sat in front of him.

He shook his head. “I need to finish this,” Tony replied. “I’m going stir-crazy in here.”

“Clearly. Power levels running low, food nearly out, and nothing to occupy ourselves with.”

Tony sighed again and dropped his hands from his face. Nebula, although she was mostly machinery and looked as determined as ever, Tony still felt the underlying sense of exhaustion and haggardness underneath. Tony didn’t feel much better, and he was sure he looked worse than her. They cut down on food to preserve it as long as possible, but even though he had often forgotten to eat during his workshop binges, this conservation took it to an extreme level.

It definitely took its toll on his body. Muscle mass lost, permanent bone-weariness, body barely functioning to survive. They knew that he wouldn’t last must longer.

“How many days has it been?”

Nebula shrugged wearily. “Long enough.”

Long enough indeed. All around them were stars, space debris, and the liminal space of…space. Tony once imagined that Earth wasn’t wide enough for him to be an Avenger; now he couldn’t stand all this nothingness.

“How about that…football game?”

Tony shrugged and looked at the piece of paper beside him. It was filled with his drawings and notes, but they went nowhere. “Sure.”

\- -

Steve was there when Tony opened his eyes to his dreams. He stared, and Steve slowly took one step towards him, giving him a hesitant and watery upwards twitch of lips.

“Tony…” Steve whispered.

Tony matched his smile. He still hurt, what with the way the past two years had treated him, but there was also a sense of blooming sense of hope that grew within his chest. He breathed back, “Hey Steve.”

Steve swallowed. The unshed tears glistened in his eyes, and he pressed his forehead against the wall. “How are things there?”

Tony wished he could feel the warmth from the other side of the barrier when he pressed back. He gritted his teeth and shook his head, trying not to convey the sense of hopelessness when he thought about the work back on the ship and the failed attempts at finding the Stones and Thanos. “It’s…not going well,” Tony admitted. “Our resources are dwindling, no leads on the Stones. We’re drifting in space.

“I hate it, looking out of the window and seeing nothing but stars and blackness. It makes me feel insignificant and small – it reminds me of when I sent the nuke into space.” Tony sniffed and closed his eyes, trying to tamp down the panic of thinking about the powerlessness.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” Steve said lowly. “I should have been. We should have done this together.”

“It was inevitable,” Tony replied. “We were stronger together, but Thanos took advantage of our weakness.”

Steve sighed. “If…there was a way to turn back time, I wouldn’t have left you like that. I would have been honest about everything, and I should have trusted you.”

“But you didn’t, and everything fell apart.” Tony looked at Steve’s stormy blue eyes, savoring them up close. “I don’t hate him. I don’t hate you either. I just wished that this –“ he waved his hand, indicating Steve’s apology, “– came earlier, and that we didn’t have to be light years apart to talk about this.”

“I regret it,” Steve said, “I regret it so much.”

“I know Steve, I know.”

-

Steve looked back at the calm and sad brown eyes, taking in the beautiful man in front of him. He wished that this wasn’t a dream, that he had the opportunity to tell him face to face that Steve _loved_ him. They stood in silence, staring at each other like time warped around them, like it was the only two of them in the world and nothing else could break this moment they had together.

It was Tony who broke the silence first. “How’s Pepper and Rhodey?”

“They’re alive,” Steve said. “They’re doing their part to do control damage as best they can, but it’s just death everywhere. We should have stopped Thanos from doing it. We could have stopped all this from happening.” Steve pushed back against the wall and stepped back one step, two.

“Hey, no. You can’t blame yourself entirely for not stopping him,” Tony countered. “Thanos was too strong and we weren’t strong enough to stop him. Because if you blame yourself, I have myself to blame too.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Steve insisted.

Tony shook his head. “All of us were to blame, and we need to own up to it. Yes, we were wiped out, but we also need to stay strong for the sake of the rest of humanity. Because if we don’t, there’s no hope left.”

“It feels like there’s no hope left.”

Tony leveled him with a steady stare. “We can’t think like that – we would die in the face of hopelessness. We have to pick ourselves up and avenge, Cap. Because that’s who we are: we avenge those who had fallen.”

Steve nodded, and Tony said as confidently as he could, “We avenge, and we have unfinished business to take care of.”

“Indeed. We have work to do.” Steve nodded before he changed the subject. “Give me whatever information you have on the Stones, and we’ll work on it from our side too.”

\- -

For once, Steve woke up not feeling like he took a crowbar to the skull. He felt a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth, and his heart felt light. It was an unfamiliar feeling after all the events that had happened, and for a moment longer, he laid in bed clinging to it and remembering the small smiles Tony gave him in their dreamscape.

It was enough motivation to propel him out of bed. He had a new mission to do, thanks to Tony; not everything felt hopeless after all.

The knowledge that Tony had given him certainly felt like rocket science (it probably was, considering that it was Tony), but at least Steve can repeat everything word for word to Bruce.

It’s been years since he walked towards the science section of the Compound, but being there gave him a warm nostalgic feeling where not a week went by where Bruce or Tony exploded something in their labs. He missed this.

He missed Tony.

Bruce’s back was to the door when Steve approached, but he turned just as Steve reached his hand up to knock. A movement of mouth, and the door opened to let Steve in. Bruce looked haggard.

“Hey Steve,” Bruce said, setting down the science-y contraption in his palm and pulling off his glasses. “What can I do for you?”

“When was the last time you slept?” Steve inquired.

Bruce shook his head. “I’ve been taking cat naps during diagnostics, but I’m working overtime to see if I can get Fury’s communicator boosted up with a stronger signal. I’ll be fine though.”

Indeed – none of them have been sleeping all that much post-Snap, and it was definitely taking its toll on their bodies. Even Steve was feeling the weariness of it, although every time he looked in the mirror, he was still as perfect as ever. He was jealous sometimes of the fact that everyone else could show their visible exhaustion while he couldn’t. It was a blessing, but it was also a curse.

“How about finding the Gauntlet and Thanos?” Steve asked.

“That’s not my area of expertise,” Bruce said. “I started on something, but I don’t have enough information to create the tech to find the Stones, or – “

“Where’s Fury?”

Steve jolted at the new voice, and he automatically reached for his shield before remembering that it wasn’t on his person. He turned sharply, looking at the intruder who appeared out of nowhere – _how had she appeared without him knowing_ , Steve wondered, settling into a fighting stance. The woman had a uniform on: she wore a red and blue suit with a gold star adorning the center of her chest, her posture was confident, and her hair still billowed slightly from her unheard and unseen entrance.

“Who are you?” Steve asked.

The woman glanced at him and promptly ignored his posturing. “Where’s Fury?” she asked again, stressing her words when they didn’t answer her question.

Steve wasn’t going to answer her because she was a stranger, a danger, and an intruder. He stared at her; she glared steadily back, giving no ground.

It was Bruce who broke their standoff. “Our best guess is that he died during the Snap. There was no trace of him.”

And Steve watched as the stranger’s face fell for just a fraction of a second, but it was enough for Steve to let down his guard a little. “Who are you?” he asked again softly.

“A friend of his,” she said. “You?”

“The Avengers.”

“Which means?” the woman asked.

“We’re a superhero team that he created to defend Earth,” Steve replied.

“And it looks like you failed your job.”

“We…couldn’t beat Thanos.” Steve loathed to admit it, because it was a weakness to show the crippling failure of them not doing their job. But they needed help, whatever help they could get.

“Fury knows that if he presses that button – “ she pointed to the communicator, which was mysteriously turned off while they were focused on her, “ – it meant that help is critical.”

“And you’re the backup?” Steve asked. When she nodded, he said disbelievingly, “But you’re the only one.”

“And I promise you, I’m a hell of a backup.” She stared steadily at Steve, gaze calculating, and Steve felt a wave of power emitting from her before the sensation cut off and she looked at Bruce. “I’m Carol. What do you need?”

\- -

“Tony.”

Tony looked even more than hell between the time Steve saw him to now. His face was gaunt, pale, exhausted, and his body hunched inwards into himself. Unconsciously, Steve lifted his arms up when Tony staggered forward, as if he couldn’t hold himself up anymore.

And Tony staggered into Steve’s waiting arms – the barrier had broken; Steve looked on in shock and horror as they collapsed to the ground.

“Steve,” Tony whispered.

“What did you do Tony?” Steve said, pushing him back slightly so that he could look at Tony in the eyes.

But Tony’s eyes were half-lidded, nearly closed, and he sagged in Steve’s arms like a puppet cut from his strings. “I’m sorry. I don’t think…” his voice trailed off and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. Steve watched as Tony’s eyelashes fluttered, eyelids struggling to open. “I don’t think I’ll make it home.”

“We’ve sent help,” Steve said desperately. “Help is coming.”

Tears began to trail down the corners of Steve’s eyes. “We’re coming to find you,” he begged, voice cracking in the middle of his sentence. Steve clung to him, holding him as tightly as he dared, as if he could singlehandedly grip him down and keep him for forever. “Just hold on a little longer.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” Tony replied. He pressed his face weakly into Steve’s neck, and there was a teardrop that landed on Steve’s skin. “I’m sorry, Steve. I should have told you…”

Steve shushed him. “Save your energy. We’re coming as fast we can to find you. You’re smart, you must have left a signal on, right? We’ll find you, and we’re bringing you home, Tony.”

Tony didn’t reply, and Steve kept his hold on him tight, not daring to let go at all for fear that the next time Steve saw him, he would –

No, he wouldn’t think about that at all. Tony _will_ come home, safe and sound. Failing this, failing now, that wasn’t an option.

Because they both had a promise to keep, and Steve wouldn’t let him go again.

\- -

He’s home. He didn’t know how, but the ship landed onto familiar soil. He felt weak, he was emaciated, he held sanity by a thread, but still, somehow, his broken body managed to conjure a tear for the sheer relief of being home.

“We made it,” Nebula said, crouching down in front of him. “We’re back on Earth.”

Tony pursed his lips, and his hand weakly twitched towards her outstretched hand, letting her pull him up to his feet. “We’re home,” he breathed back at her, and she nodded.

“Everyone’s waiting for us.”

Tony wanted to sob, but it seemed as if his body was done giving up – his body breathed back new life because he had a second chance to fix things. Tony staggered beside Nebula’s calm and steady presence, letting her carry a good portion of his weight (which was admittedly not much, given the way the food ran out four days ago), and he breathed in the fresh air for the first time in weeks.

“Tony!”

There he was, running towards him at full speed, sheer relief in his eyes, and Tony pulled away from Nebula to stumble towards Steve. Steve held him up in waiting arms.

“Steve,” he rasped, tears of relief and unhappiness in his eyes. Because as much as he missed Steve, he also missed Peter. “I lost the kid.”

Steve clung to Tony. “We lost,” he mumbled back in Tony’s ears, which confirmed everything.

But still, there was still an inkling of doubt in his mind, that they were connected to each other, so Tony pulled back slightly and said, “I dreamed about you, in a Red Room, that you said sorry to me, and you told me how much you regretted hurting me.”

Steve nodded, an unhappy look in his eyes. “I had the same dream. And I’m sorry, I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.”

“I forgive you.”

“I’ll be there for you now, not in the way I wasn’t for you before,” Steve said. There were tears in his eyes, but there was also a look of benediction and promise. “I’ll be there for you. I love you, and I should have told you before, but now that I have this second chance, I can’t not tell you that.”

Tony curled his hands up to Steve’s head, tangling his fingers in his hair, and then he pulled him forward so that their foreheads pressed against each other’s. “I love you too,” he whispered. “We’ll fix this, all of this, together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done! Dreamkist, I hope you like this. Please let me know if you guys like this as well with a comment and a kudos. You guys are amazing sticking with me.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](https://la-toratempesta.tumblr.com/)!


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